NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED: Tales of Crazy Possession and Lethal Obsession

Wednesday, August 22: Extemporaneous Speech Day!!!
One of my 5-minute classroom-desk compositions.

Once again, I failed myself
I failed, and smile did he
He laughed yet little did I know
He’d fired the gun at me

~ ~

This is a story of failure,
And that old witch was me,
She’d messed up on her potions,
Got turned into a tree
To stand erect in silence
The people to exclaim,
“Hail, the brightest witch in the land
She’s messed up on her name.”


"Today I Hereby Declare Preparation Rubbish"
perhaps many of you do recall the speech I'd spent so much time preparing for, that I even posted the entire length of the essay here in Litnet...*sigh*
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=27229

I blacked out.
I guess it lasted a long time.
It was so stupid. Such a stupid mistake.

Next time, I won't make a speech my parents can't hear, even if that means telling lies and neglecting the truth completely, for I know that (aside from myself) they are the only people around who can actually help me.

How treacherous this brain can be.
And just when I thought I had it right in my head, stuffed into that gigantic hollow in the middle of my skull.

Somehow I want to cry but I can't. My heart is heavy and it's weighing me down and my brain is blinking its last next to total annihilation but I'm still here —intact and whole, alive and kicking, everything but blasted out dead.

I guess it probably would've been better if people came rushing to me with haughty looks on their faces "congratulating" me on what wrong things I'd just done offering their sympathy and consolation and convincing me to do better next time (after all, there is ALWAYS a next time) while my face gradually turns red in shame. But no, nobody even cares!

Not even my teacher.

Maybe he, too, is laughing.

10:30 PM, the very same day:
Here I am, trying to concentrate on some algebra homework, hoping I could just forget what had happened earlier ago and simply try again (which would most likely mean a poor grade this quarter and a just-okay one next time). Oh well). Oh well—a 1.25 isn’t bad anyway—supposing he’d give me that grade. But what if I get something lower? Three words can be used to describe that: I’m absolutely doomed.

THE NEXT DAY...

Scared of rats
And bulging fats
Of fears so heavenly
Unprepared
And doggone scared
Of what I’ve got in me

What a piteous griper I am.
So this was what I'd been fearing. So this was what I'd hated the most.
A 96. For a speech mastered so well—even up to the minutest detail. (So my teacher says.) For a score that could've been perfect—if only I'd established enough eye-contact with my audience and made my speech a little shorter (it lasted a little more than eight minutes, some three minutes past the time limit).
And what in the world is actually so wrong with a 1.0? A 1.0 final grade... a 1.0 card grade... isn't that about everything a student could wish for? Wouldn't you call that paradise? Wouldn't you call that heaven?

Still, I cannot believe it. Had I truly seen my grade, or another's by mistake? So what was I grumbling about? Why did I have to give myself such a hard time when I was actually going to be rewarded for doing such a crazy thing and messing up right in the middle of an important speech?

Everything for a one flat grade.